A Vow of Love Series | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

Where Does Desire Come From?

July 11, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

Where does desire come from? It comes from the belief that self-nature is real. According to the Buddha, if you believe that you are a self, if you believe in self-nature as being real, as being truly existent, then there has to be desire, because in order to be a self or to have a self, you have to define a self. That’s how it is. If you believe in the nature of self, you have to have an underlying belief that self ends here and other begins there. You have to have some conceptualization in your mind about what the self is, because the idea of self cannot exist without some definition. Conceptual proliferation develops, and with that, desire.

Desires are not always fulfilled. There is always the contest between self and other, and from those contests the three root poisons of hatred, greed and ignorance occur. It is the presence of hatred, greed and ignorance in the mind that causes phenomena to appear as they do. If there were no hatred, greed and ignorance in the mind, there would be no cause for suffering and therefore we would not see the phenomena of war, hunger, old age, sickness and death in the world. There would be no cause. This is the understanding and commitment that you should think about and work with in your mind.

Love That Sustains

July 10, 2011 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

How can you develop the kind of love that sustains itself? How can you cultivate compassion like a fire that never runs out of wood to burn? That never goes out. The fire of compassion is based on being courageous enough to come to an understanding of suffering. You have to come to a deep understanding that all sentient beings are suffering endlessly and helplessly, and bring yourself to the point where you can’t bear it. Cultivate the understanding that even though you know you can’t see all sentient beings, you can’t feel them, you can’t touch them, still, you want nothing more than to rid hatred, greed and ignorance from their minds, because you understand this is the cause of their suffering. You understand the whole dynamics of suffering: why it exists, how it exists, where it exists, how it grows, and at that point you become deeply committed.

You can begin by renouncing the causes of suffering yourself. If you have not renounced the causes of suffering, you can’t do a thing for anyone else, and so it takes a tremendous amount of courage. According to the Buddha, hatred, greed and ignorance in the mind are the causes of suffering. Hatred, greed and ignorance are preceded by desire. If there is no desire in the mind, there is no root from which these poisons can grow; there is no cause for hatred, greed and ignorance.

Motivation That Nourishes the Path

July 9, 2011 by Holly

Excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

It’s almost impossible to attain the goal of selfless compassion, where you commit every fiber of your being to benefiting all sentient beings, seen and unseen, without a moment’s hesitation. It’s almost impossible to develop the kind of compassion where you understand that all sentient beings are revolving helplessly in such suffering that they can’t bear it, and you can’t bear to think it’s going on, without cultivating a deep understanding of suffering. You want to avoid the trap of making the very same prayers that the selfishly motivated person might do, but instead have the idea that you want to be a great Bodhisattva.

One goal will produce lasting results and the other will not. The person with the motivation of selflessness has the key. Through extraordinary, selfless compassion, that person has the strength to persevere through everything until he or she is awake. That person will persevere until he or she has completely purged from his or her mind even the smallest, gossamer thin seeds of hatred, greed and ignorance. The person whose motivation is to be the ‘good person’ will not be able to do the same for any length of time. The foundation isn’t strong enough. That person may need some kind of feedback, or warm fuzzies as reward for being good. Even tried and true Buddhists will find this impure motivation in your minds. Even our ordained Sangha will find that they, themselves, will have dry periods. You’ll go spiritually dry, bone dry, and you’ll think, “What am I doing here? I can’t go on; it’s just too hard.” Then the next day, you’ll wake up and you’ll think, “Another day…good.” You’ll have all these different feelings that are just so common. Everybody, everybody has them. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to have these feelings.

Why does it flip flop back and forth? Because you have not built the firm foundation of very pure, selfless compassion. You need to cultivate it every single moment. You need to get yourself past the point where you need warm fuzzies to keep you going. If you are only looking at the symptom of suffering and trying to manipulate your environment to turn suffering around, you will always need feedback. That feedback may or may not come. Your compassion, your love should not depend on that.

Awareness of Suffering

June 28, 2011 by Holly

Excerpt from a teaching on Compassion by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

If you’ve never practiced the Buddhadharma before, or if you’re interested in practicing, or if you have practiced some general meditation and you feel it’s time to move on to a path that is more stable or well known, then you’re in a perfect place for this teaching. You can start practicing one of the most important teachings of the Buddha right now. You can begin to cultivate the mind of compassion. How might you do this? First of all, you might look around and examine physical existence.

In America, we hide our suffering. We have very little knowledge of real suffering, and I think that’s one reason why it’s very difficult for Westerners to practice a pure and disciplined path. We think we understand suffering because we have experienced loneliness, or because when we were kids we had the measles, or because we have gone through marriages and divorces. Or maybe we’ve seen some sickness or poverty. For these reasons, we think we understand suffering, and we do to some extent. These are valid sufferings.

But there’s a funny thing about our culture that we must understand. We are actually hidden from the sufferings of our culture. When people are deformed, handicapped, mentally or terminally ill, they are taken away from the mainstream of society and they are hidden. Or if we are considered unpresentable to most people, we have plastic surgery or we have some kind of therapy that makes us like everyone else. In fact, if we examine the healing process in American medicine, part of that process is to become like other people. We are made to look like other people.

In other countries around the world suffering is more evident, for many different reasons: those countries may not be as technologically advanced as our country, or their culture may be an older society in which suffering has become more the norm and it is not such a shock to see it. Or perhaps poverty is a factor.

I will describe how I felt when I first went to India. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t claim to be so compassionate; I too have to cultivate the idea of compassion every day. But I remember seeing people walking the streets with arms and legs missing, eaten up by leprosy. I saw mothers and fathers maim their children, not because they hated them or because they were cruel to them, but because that would give them a deformity they could use for begging. That would be the only way they could ensure their survival. There was no other way for them to get food. What do we do for our children? We might send ours to school. In the streets of India, they have to prepare them in a different way.

Suffering is a part of the fabric of the society in India, and it’s very evident. I remember walking down the street in Delhi. There was a young boy who must have been twelve; it was hard to tell, he was so small. He was lying on a rag, a tattered blanket, and he was dying. He was so thin that he looked like the pictures of starvation we see from Ethiopia. He was beyond thin. His bones were sticking out, his belly swollen, his tongue hanging out. And next to him were a few coins and a candy bar. Someone had thrown them down for him.

We don’t see that in our culture. We don’t understand it. We think that the things we’ve gone through – the divorces, not being able to pay the light bill, the heartbreak of psoriasis, the things we consider so awesome – are the real sufferings of the world. But they are not all the world has to endure.

Look at the animal realm. We know what our animals are like. They get fed everyday and they have it pretty good. But not all animals are like them. If we go to different countries, we see beasts of burden that are treated in horrible ways. We see animals that are denied their natural environment.

Humans and animals are only two life forms. According to the Buddha’s teachings, there are many different life forms, many of which are non-physical. How we appear, how we manifest, what form we take has to do with the qualities of our mind. If we are filled with hate, we are reborn in a hell realm. Why is that so hard to understand? When you are filled with hate now, even as a human being, aren’t you in your own private hell? Have you ever gone through a period where you were so filled with anger that everything you saw became ugly and you managed to distort it somehow? Each of us has lived in a private hell. Why is it so hard to believe that we are capable of living in or creating a situation like that? If your mind is capable of having a nightmare, then rebirth in a hell realm is a possibility.

Have you ever been needy? Have you ever gone through a period in your life when you needed approval, or love, or some kind of nourishment so badly, that you were in a state of despair? When people did reach out to you, they couldn’t get through? Each of us, for at least one moment in our lives, has experienced this. Why then is it so hard to understand that these kinds of existences really do exist?

Having understood that this is logical, having examined your own mind truthfully – and truthfully is the key – and found the residue of these experiences in your mind, you can allow yourself to go more deeply into the recognition that the Buddha was right. There is suffering in cyclic existence.

We have to think also of our own suffering. We must think that even if we have a TV, a car, a house, and all of the things that we are taught to desire, there will be a point at which we cannot take them with us. There will be a point at which they will do us no good. That point, of course, is death. All of the efforts that we’ve gone through to get those things will have been wasted.

Long-time Dharma practitioners may think, “I really wish she’d get on with it. I know this.” I have to tell you, if you really knew the truth of suffering, there would not be one moment that you did not practice with the utmost compassion. There would not be one moment when you thought only of yourself and your needs, and of the temporary gratifications you think you must have. Yet you still have many of those moments.

The Medicine of Selflessness

November 24, 2011September 25, 2010 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

What is renunciation? Do you have to give up your car? No, I have a car, and I have no plan to give it up. Do you have to give up a nice place to live? No, you don’t have to give up a nice place to live. What then do you have to give up? You have to give up self-absorption. You have to give up selfishness. You have to give up a life filled with non-virtue. That is true renunciation, regardless of the outer form or appearance. You may choose to adopt the outer form of renunciation, which is a time-honored, pure and useful way to utilize these teachings. But you can also adopt it in an inner way. If you have the ability to practice renunciation in an inner and profound way, it is also useful. It also works.

What you renounce is self-absorption, and you begin to live an extraordinary life, one that is involved in Bodhicitta, or compassion. That is the way to understand Bodhicitta in the simplest view, to understand it as compassion. You must live an extraordinary life, and in living an extraordinary life you are actually taking the cure, you are taking the medicine. Not only is it a nice thing to do, not only will you be known worldwide as a nice guy, but you will also be taking the medicine of selflessness. If the sickness is the belief in self-nature and the desire and grasping that come from all the phenomena surrounding the idea of self, then the cure is a selfless life. The cure is compassion, and you are taking the cure.

Spiritual Technology

November 24, 2011September 21, 2010 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

You are at the beginning. You have arrived at the door to liberation. You are knocking on a door that opens to the end of suffering. You have a tremendous capacity here, and in order to utilize that capacity you have to begin to utilize the technology being offered you. That technology is very simple: you have to soften and turn your mind. Whether you are a Buddhist or not, in order to achieve any realization at all – in fact in order to continue in a steadfast way on a path without being pulled away by the craziness of your own mind – you have to develop stability. That stability has to be based on the softening and gentling of your mind. You have to free it as much as possible from discursive thought, and from the conceptualization associated with the belief in self-nature as being real. You have to free it enough to be able to get some perspective.

Through that stability and deepening we can begin to examine these essential thoughts: that all sentient beings want to be happy, that all beings are suffering, that there is a cessation to suffering, and that the cessation to suffering is called enlightenment.

We should examine these thoughts, because Westerners have a very complicated world. Maybe it is hard to understand that all beings wish to be happy here in the West, because here we listen to the news and we hear about people throwing bombs at each other. We hear about robbery, rape and murder. We think, “Wow, that person raped and murdered; he is a horrible person.” We condemn him immediately and forget the other side of that thought, which is that he is trying to be happy. Can you believe that? Is that not an awesome thought? People who are raping and murdering, people throwing bombs in each other’s windows – how can you believe that these people want to be happy? Yet, it is absolutely the case. All sentient beings want to be happy, but they are drunk with the idea that there is no cause and effect. They are drunk with the idea that they can attain happiness by manipulating their environment in some crazy way. It just doesn’t work.

For instance, a freedom fighter might believe if he destroys a thousand people by throwing a bomb into a building, he might attain some liberty for his people, and through that effort he will be happy. That might be his thinking, but he doesn’t realize he has killed a thousand people, and through his action has created the karma in his mindstream of a thousand deaths that can only be the cause of suffering. He really believes he is doing something good. Even the rapist and murderer – maybe he has an uncontrollable urge that is deep and profound. Where does that urge come from? Why don’t you have it? It is because he has the karma of that urge. Maybe it was caused when many lifetimes ago he threw a bomb in somebody’s window and killed a thousand people, and maybe that is why he has that urge in his mindstream now. So what does he do? He continues to rape and murder. At the moment of doing so, he thinks he will end the suffering of his uncontrollable urge through raping and murdering just once more.

That is how horrible it is, but these people really are trying to be happy. Think about that. Think about how they are suffering uncontrollably, revolving again and again in cyclic existence, helplessly, because of the karma that has infected their minds. They are helpless in the midst of the cause and effect that they have created — simply helpless. Even in these horrible cases it is true, all sentient beings are trying to be happy. On the other side of this law, which the Buddha declared, is that not understanding how to create happiness, they constantly create the causes of suffering through non-virtue.

These are things you absolutely must remember. You have to allow them to deepen your mind. They have to become as instinctive and natural to you as breathing. If you understand the infallibility of cause and effect to such a profound extent that it begins to change the compulsion you have to create non-virtue and therefore the causes of unhappiness, then you are a practitioner. You are practicing a technology that will lead you to realization. Whether you consider yourself a Buddhist or not, you are practicing a valid technology, a spiritual technology.

A Few Words on Reincarnation

November 24, 2011September 20, 2010 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

Now, from my point of view, if you don’t believe in reincarnation you have no access to the technology of Buddhism. You have to accept the idea you have lived before, and that some of the results you see ripening in your life now are ripening due to causes created in a time you do not know. And that some of the causes you are creating now – because you are creating causes constantly – will ripen in a time you cannot see. If you don’t accept that, Buddhist or not Buddhist, you cannot evolve in your mind; you cannot adapt and have the strength to continue. In fact, you cannot have the perspective to practice the antidote to suffering. Everyone who has ever been considered a living Buddha on this earth has taught reincarnation. So maybe you might want to consider it an idea that you could adopt.

It’s the Law

November 24, 2011September 18, 2010 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

The Buddha says that all sentient beings are suffering and that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. But we forget that enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. As a Buddhist you say, “Oh, yes, I’ve learned that. I practice the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind. Enlightenment is the cessation of suffering. I have that memorized.” Oh, really? I must ask you then, why do you still practice the technology of suffering? Because until you achieve supreme realization, you are still practicing the technology of suffering. You realize this, and yet you continually create the circumstances that make you suffer. Here is why we do that: we have forgotten the other infallible law, the law of the certainty of cause and effect.

We have a problem. We are locked in to our own limited perspectives. We are in finite bodies, therefore our minds perceive in a finite way, a way that is natural for a finite reality to be perceived. Within this context, we can see that certain cause and effect relationships are absolutely unchangeable, that they always happen, that they can’t be messed with. We can see that if we pick something up and then drop it, it will fall.

Now, you may say that cause and effect doesn’t always work. There is magic, there is prayer, there are miracles. Okay then, pick something up, anything, and drop it, and stop it from falling. Let me see you do it. Who can do it? If you can do it, then I am going to buy your story and the class is over. Until we can figure out how to do that, it is certain if something is dropped, it will fall. It is also certain if you stick your hand in fire for long enough, your flesh will burn. It is certain if you never eat you will starve. It is certain if you catch a disease you will be sick. These things we understand.

It is also certain that everybody gets old. But the strange thing about us is, while we are still young enough to have a little twinkle in our eye, we will continue to convince ourselves that we will never get old. What we do is unbelievable. I have done it myself, so I know. Each year we buy something new, a little wrinkle remover, a little under-eye cover-up, and each year we still convince ourselves that nothing has changed. Then eventually, none of that stuff works. Then we have two choices: we can either face the facts or consider surgery. Whatever we do, we are putting off the inevitable.

Want a Taste?

November 24, 2011September 17, 2010 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

From the first day that I began teaching until the last day that I ever have the opportunity to teach, I will invariably speak of compassion. If compassion were ice cream, by the time you finish with me you will have tasted every flavor at least 475 times. So, now we will talk about another flavor of compassion.

Previously, we have discussed why compassion is necessary. Then we spoke about how to begin to apply that compassion. We talked about various ways in which one could be motivated by compassion, as well as thoughts that you might have found moving or encouraging and that were geared to deepen and soften your mind. These are very important. One of the greatest, most precious jewels that you will hopefully attain in traveling the Buddhist path, or any spiritual path, is to have your mind softened and deepened.

There is an expression in one of our prayers, that one’s mind becomes ‘hard as horn.’ The minute I first read that particular phrase, it touched me deeply. Every time I have thought about it, it has meant more and more to me. One’s mind becomes hard as horn because of the discrimination, the conceptualization that is involved with the idea of ego, because of the pride and arrogance that arise from our belief in self-nature as being inherently real. We have established in our minds all of the clothing, the dogma, the discrimination of this idea of self as being real. These things become rigid in our minds, and our minds are no longer gentle.

The moment you decide in some subconscious way you have an ego, that you are a self, you have to start gathering the constructs of self-identity around you. You have to determine where self ends and other begins. In order to do that your mind has to be filled with conceptualization. In order to be a self you have to survive as a self. In order to maintain this conceptualization that makes survival possible, your mind has to become rigid. So if I say to you that your mind is rigid, you shouldn’t think I have insulted you. I am talking about a condition all sentient beings have, and it is a condition that is the cause of a great deal of suffering.

When I say that all sentient beings are suffering, I don’t wish it to be a real downer for you. That is not the point. Realizing all sentient beings are suffering is meant to soften your mind, because to realize all sentient beings are suffering, you have to be willing to examine phenomena and to examine yourself in a deep way, in a way that you don’t normally do. Therefore, you have to challenge your concepts. Why is that? Because naturally, and without any teaching or any encouragement, you will try to convince yourself that you are happy.

You may do this in much the same way that a person who is hungry and unable to eat will do something to take his mind off his hunger. Let’s say its 10 o’clock. You’re on the job, you’re famished, and you know you can’t get off for lunch until 12 o’clock. You are going to try to think of something else. You’re going to try to keep your mind busy, or try not to focus on your hunger. In much the same way, if you are suffering and you don’t have the technology to remove from your mind the causes of this suffering, you are going to try to convince yourself that you are okay. You are going to put a band-aid on it, and in order for you to do so, your mind has to become more hardened.

It is useful to really look around at sentient beings and see they are suffering. It is also useful to look at yourself. This is not meant to make you depressed or sad. It is meant to give you what it takes to go to the next step, which is to try to determine for yourself the way to remove the causes of suffering.

Even though there are times when hunger is not comfortable, when you would rather not think about it, there are also times when hunger is useful in that it keeps you alive. In the same way, while it may be uncomfortable for you to think that all sentient beings are suffering, it is actually quite useful for you to realize that. It is this realization that will give you the foundation and the ability to turn your mind in such a way that you have to seek out the causes of suffering, and how you can remove them from your mind.

It is not useful in any long-term way to try to convince yourself, by putting a band-aid on an ulcer, that everything is okay, because you still have to face the same things that you’ve always had to face. Nothing has changed. You still have to face old age, sickness and death. Neither does it help you to be helpful to other sentient beings. Look at the animal realm. Go to India and see how the oxen are beaten and tied up in order to be worked. They are worked all of their lives. That is suffering. Look at all the different ways that other creatures suffer just out of ignorance, because they have no way to help themselves.

Once you have determined suffering does exist, there is no need to dwell on it in a morbid way. Rather, you should think, “This is how it is. Now I have to realize that there is, in fact, a cure, there is a way to deal with this.” It is not useful to dwell on suffering without also accepting the antidote. In other words, if you just think about hunger all the time, and you don’t eat, that is stupid. When hunger is no longer useful to you, it is simply suffering. You should use your awareness of suffering to prod you to seek and practice the antidote to suffering. Use your awareness; it is your tool.

It Takes Virtue

March 24, 2010 by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo from the Vow of Love series

You only have to consider the suffering of sentient beings long enough to help you create within yourself a virtuous mindstream. Once you have created a virtuous mindstream, you no longer need consider suffering. It is not useful to suffer considering suffering. It is only useful if it compels you on a path that ends suffering. That is the point.

Having heard this teaching, I hope you never become weary hearing your teachers talk about suffering. You will only hear about suffering long enough for you to soften your mind and change the way you live. You will only hear about it long enough to fill your life with virtuous and compassionate acts. If you are not completely convinced that all sentient beings are suffering, you can’t help them. You won’t help them. You won’t have the strength or the fortitude to persevere. But once your mind is stable in the practice of compassion, once you are moved by compassion to where it is a fire in your heart and you can’t do anything except that which will end suffering, that which will bring enlightenment to all sentient beings, you don’t need to meditate on suffering anymore. You are already on fire. Once you are convinced of the infallibility of cause and effect, to the extent that there is no more non-virtue in your mindstream, you don’t need to think about suffering anymore. There is no point. You are already doing what is necessary to end suffering. However, once you are so filled with compassion that your whole life is virtuous, your whole life is a vehicle for nothing but compassionate activity, and once you are convinced of the infallibility of cause and effect to the extent that there is no more non-virtue in your mindstream, you are also enlightened!

The point is this. You are receiving this teaching for a certain reason. You might think you are just curious, or interested in Buddhism and would like to explore it a little further. Or you may think you would like to deepen, or you would like to learn all things from all places. Or you may be interested in becoming a Buddhist. Whatever your particular format, you do have a reason, and I bet that reason is based upon the fact that you want to find a way out of suffering not only for yourself, but for all sentient beings as well. When I say ‘out’, I don’t mean that you want to get enlightened and then leave. I mean that you want to find a way out of the kind of mindstream, the kind of phenomena that causes suffering in both you and in all sentient beings. You want to see if there is another option.

Even if you haven’t faced that fact exactly in your heart, you are looking for something, and you are a good person. You wouldn’t be receiving this teaching if you were not a good person. You must be interested; you must have karma with the idea of compassion. Because of the infallible way that karma works, you could not receive this teaching if you didn’t have the karma of compassionate activity. You must have a tremendous amount of virtue squirreled away somewhere. I am not claiming I am such a virtuous teacher that you have to be particularly virtuous to hear me. That is not what I am saying. I am saying that in order to hear the word ‘compassion,’ in order to hear the word ‘Bodhicitta’, in order to even hear these ideas from any source, you have to have a tremendous amount of virtue, because that is the Buddha’s teaching.